Ex-chancellor Angela Merkel publishes memoirs
Former German chancellor Angela Merkel's memoirs hit the bookshops today. The content of the 700-page biography, which has been translated into 30 languages and is titled "Freedom: Memoirs 1954 - 2021", has been kept top secret until now. European commentators look back at Merkel's life and time in office.
The story of her two lives
Merkel is an important witness of how things were in Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall, historian Timothy Garton Ash explains in La Repubblica:
“Angela Merkel was the first and last East German at the helm of the reunified Germany, the key power in Europe. There may be future chancellors from the regions that once formed the German Democratic Republic (GDR), but none of them will be marked by the experience of having lived in East Germany. This, rather than the revelations about the key decisions she made in her role as chancellor during 16 extraordinary years, is the really interesting element of Merkel's memoir, titled Freedom. She calls it 'the story of my two lives', and the question is how the first life influenced the second.”
Moderation and the middle way
El País is starting to miss the former chancellor:
“Since her departure, Europe has been running around like a headless chicken. ... Divided, disoriented, worried about a Russian attack. ... Merkel left knowing that she was leaving her friend Ursula von der Leyen at the helm of the European Commission, having noted her efficiency as a minister. ... Now von der Leyen's Commission is much further to the right and is courting the Italian prime minister. ... What does Merkel think of this transformation? Can one really cooperate with the darkest forces on the continent? Perhaps we will miss the discreet and not at all arrogant Angela Merkel. ... She always defined her approach as 'a policy of moderation and the middle way'. Middle way, not far right.”
Even Mutti had her limitations
Things have changed since the end of the Cold War and old decisions must be reappraised, Jyllands-Posten comments:
“In the new era it has become clear that Merkel's pragmatism was also her weakness. Not enough thought was given to future-proofing prosperity, necessary and difficult choices were not taken for the military defence of all that had been achieved, and the view of the West's opponents, such as Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, was often unforgivably naive. So it's only right and proper that we are now having an honest conversation about Mutti and her virtues and shortcomings. It is the high standards that Merkel has set for the chancellorship that make her successor Olaf Scholz look like an insubstantial lightweight.”